Subject of honor of TÜYAP Istanbul Book Fair: The Buñuel of Our Literature Nazlı Eray
Nazlı Eray is like the Pangea of our literature.. That’s why she can look at boundless, intertwined worlds with a different award…
MELTEM SEZEN KILIÇ – DENİZ INTELLIGENCE
He talked with Nazlı Eray, Guest of Honor of TÜYAP Istanbul Book Fair, about his miraculous realism and writing adventure.
What do you think writing is? When did you start writing?
I started writing at a very young age. I was in middle school son class. One day, he appears out of a dark window of the dimly lit apartment on the Şişhane hillside, where we live with my parents, and he has settled into a belief called Monsieur Hristo, which covers an A4. I don’t know, it’s my first post in the past, but it’s always referred to as my first story. Monsieur Hristo, the doorman of that Saadet Apartment on Şişhane slope, started to fly as a pigeon that landed on the edge of the pavement one morning, and after leaving the house and traveling over Pera for twelve hours, he realized its costs; Would it be better if I was a janitor in this house, what are the schools here, the bells are ringing, somewhere in an open-air casino Perihan Sözeri sings, young pigeons settle near our pigeon, but do nothing, on the one hand, he thinks of his house and his wife Marina, who is left behind. But he has wings, he can fly. You can come out of all that depression.
Then Monsieur Hristo goes home. After the day’s view, it sits on the side of the pavement above Pera in the city, when all the lights are on, as a pigeon. Then, as Monsieur Hristo, approaching the concierge’s apartment and saying to his wife that he is very tired, he lies around and sleeps. I finished the story and signed under it. The story of Monsieur Christo. Istanbul of the 60s. Life is both beautiful and difficult. The world is both huge and very small. Both crooked and straight. Strange. So it has nothing to do with today, it’s the mid-60s… no Superman, no Harry Potter, no Lord of the Rings, no Flying Man, no Captain Marvel, no cell phones, no television, nothing. I put the story I had written in an envelope and wrote the phone number on the bottom, and threw the envelope under the door leading to the school literature schools to run through the side streets. That’s weird too. Then I ran back home and waited to explore. It will be miracle. Until that moment, it was my own production, but when something came to pass. I told them not to say, does the man ever fly? The man cannot fly. I don’t know anything. Surrealism, surrealism Picasso, Camus, Buñuel… These are very new in Paris and I am 16 years old, I don’t know any of them. That’s when my phone rang. From school. Envelope enclosures. But what sort of sortie could a janitor sweep away the envelope. They are calling me, the teacher is calling. What kind of running is I going through the side streets again. When I got to the school gate, I stopped. Students are lined up at the gates of literature schools. The news has been suspended. There were students left and right, a few teachers, everyone congratulates me. “Who is Monsieur Christo?” they execute. They opened it and read the story. They signed me up for the club. I didn’t have a record. A faint student is 15-16 years old. A red leather sofa, they sat there. Congratulations coming and writing for the first time in his life the writer felt there. The story of my authorship. I did not write for any reason. It came suddenly. What does surrealism mean?
What does writing mean to you?
Writing is a great freedom. Create. Creating a new world. Go on and on. Make the rules you want. The tempo of my first story and my last novel is always the same. I can dictate a book. On some devices, if only Balzac can do that. I dictate a few of my books. It’s easier for me. Thus, the thought pattern is not broken.
What are you going through in the aging process?
Before writing a book, she has a pain like childbirth. Then, suddenly, it begins to fall out like the cracking of a pomegranate and the scattering of its seeds. The first sentence contains the whole book. I didn’t make any plans. The sketch is very few, very rare. I can write a name or two. Notebook text, handwriting. I think I have about 75 books. Writing is a great freedom. A great adventure, a great journey. Create…
How do you write a defense? Are you shutting yourself down?
No, I write in public. Usually in coffees, they are found in large quantities, I don’t know, I was writing that when I was in Ankara. Such a lantern closes over me; Something like a bubble, I don’t hear anything. As long as he doesn’t talk to me, I can write my post. I have no rituals. I never write at home. I’ve never had a writing desk.
You said you have notebooks and your hand written. Would you tell?
I have beautiful gold, silver, rose gold plated notebooks. She loves fancy, flamboyant, sequined, sequined notebooks like women’s evening dresses. I write in notebooks like that. Stylish.
In addition to your many recommendations, you suggest that young writer candidates should first read a stylish notebook.
A stylish and beautiful notebook that you will love and feel comfortable in. Just like a shoe, a dress, a glove. A notebook you can feel comfortable in.
“Children who don’t listen to fairy tales draw cats with a ruler,” said Mrs. Nazli, Cemal Süreya. What is magical reality? really fairy tales, dreams, tales of myths, where in reality? Why is it common in Eastern societies?
Let me tell you about my magical realism. I just found the recipe for this. In Europe, in America, everything is Christian now. Films and scenarios are always realistic, I envy and envy a lot. My two stories The Angelo Savelli story was played for 17 years in Italy. Two little stories. Why can’t we do such things? I wonder if my stories are difficult, I always think about it. They tried so hard, the Monte Cristo movie was made. I have a few popular stories and they always hang on to them: Monte Cristo, Monsieur Christo, whereas there is “Izzet the Serpent, Happy Homes, Warm Homes”. My first stories “I Recognized the Night, Oh Mister Ah” are very valuable and could all be films. Angelo Savelli was astounded at what he got out of those two little stories, and that he played so long… Turning to magical realism, whenever I talk about my era, they say it’s amazing. That dark gap on the Şişhane slope, the old quarter, the sharpener on the street, these are extraordinary for me; my childhood, my happiness, my games, the ice cream maker… Those who lived with what they used the other day have actually experienced better things. So my point of view is realism. When I was a kid I used to watch your wife show for hours. I used to see little fairies, dwarves, deer pulling the carriage. There was a tile stove, it burned crispy. Going to the fire I would see such complicated things. That’s realism. Magical realism is about putting a veil on reality, then putting the reader through one door, making the children go around well, making him/her believe in the world where you make impossible things happen, make him/her accept it, and then bring it out through the other door, to make him happy. I am from such an award to the world. And don’t be too happy, don’t be too happy while I’m typing.
Do you re-read what you wrote?
I never scribble, they usually don’t make any edits. It stays like a patch when you touch it. Sometimes in the morning, my thirteen author page. Then I add something to the midnight charges. I’ll look the next morning and find out what didn’t happen right away. It’s getting better the way it feels. It’s like the wind.
Does every person have a road advisor, reference people? Who are yours? He dreams of Tanpınar, Buñuel and his lovers. What else would you say?
There was Buñuel week when I went to Paris for an invitation. That week destroyed me, destroyed me. Something tremendous. How excited I am, what a strange feeling. I knew him then. I got to know him better in the readings about Tanpınar and I admired that strange information. That obsolescence, that oblivion, that disappearance, that debts, that shyness to life, lack of money, that secluded Narmanlı Apartment building… Despite all this, it contains four novels like a bombshell. I became fan. Maybe I compared his personality to myself a little bit.
But you are very much alive. How often we met you when we were in Ankara. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to meet your author on the streets, in cafes…
I love big cities, I’m a metropolitan person. The train will pass at the top, there will be a tunnel at the bottom. I like places like Chicago. Wild places. Difficult places.
Speaking of cities, what does Ms. Nazlı publish about the effects of cities and places on literature?
Places are very important to me. It is the same in literature. Cities are very important to me. Sinop, Izmir, New York are very important. I don’t know Tahiti is very important, actually the world is very important. A city can write me a novel. For example: Mardin. Here is the novel about Luis Buñuel that you mentioned, that wrote the “Black Rose of Halfeti”.
Guardians of the times…
Albert Einstein said that time is bullshit, I like this saying very much. Time information. At times death can be the same thing. There may be no such thing as time. Time is in every human being. It could be a loop. There are things that will pass the time well, there are things that will not pass the time. I thought about it. Time is something else. It is something that is in the mind of a person, in his soul, in his brain. Is time coming or going, is time going up or down? Time is a flowing river, perhaps an incoming waterfall.
The relationship between the city and time is perfect in your work of Fog Butterflies.
The moon is beautiful. “Fog Butterflies” takes place in Sinop. There is no time in Sinop. Because the fog is there, and the fog destroys time. For example, when you are sitting in a cafe in Sinop, suddenly there is a fog, just like a smoke screen, you hear the conversations, people disappear. That’s why I love Sinop. That city is a city that destroys time.
You also have many works in children’s literature. What would you say?
I care so much. Because I press a button and I go into labor. All that dimension of my body, there are formations that I discovered realism, or they are always written there. Pera, Şişhane hill, Monsieur Hristo. There’s a giant that doesn’t fit in a city. There is also Tanpınar in my children’s books, there is also Rihanna.
Its magical history is something that comes into your literature with your history. What would you say about it?
Maybe I’m one of the first in the world to do magical documentary realism. I don’t know if there is another. This is how Eva Peron, Stalin and Tanpınar lost their lives. Kennedy assassination is a very curious assassination. In this magical documentary, all the documents are correct, I examine, research, immerse myself in the book, I live, I think For example, when you live a person’s life in America, you live with that person for a few years. That’s how it’s written. All documents are real, within this reality I reveal the fantastic fiction. Magical documentary realism. All is real. You cannot be changed. We can run Stalin’s life, we cannot change it.
What nourishes you in your works? What do you read, what do you watch, where do you travel?
I travel everywhere. Extremely ordinary movies, my murder movies. I like documentaries. I love Japanese movies. I love Japanese literature. Researching with the Japanese in America years ago. I like Tokyo. Tokyo is also one of my favorite cities. I would love to go to all these places again, maybe not possible. I’m looking at the article where I could spend my life in a cabin on a transatlantic. I can finish a novel with a hotel. I was a vagrant as a child, and I am again.
Does literature have to renew itself?
Of course, it has to be renewed, who looks at literature in this electronic age. If William Shakespeare did a striptease, no one would look before he came. It might be on the literature shelves for him. I made an explanation in the book Southwest of the Heart. That is, a scene can be made into a screen while a stage play is being played. Our phone screen that we can’t take our eyes off every day. For example… (So literature has to adapt to this technology.) Of course. Somewhere you are. Somewhere people become robots…
Why is “Manuscript Dreams” important to you? Why are you keeping it separate?
I like it. It’s important, of course. It is an important book that has been left on the coast. Actually, it’s an autobiography. There is a huge part of my feelings there.
Who are your authors? We talked about Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, who else is there?
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Yasunari Kavabata, Tennesse Williams, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Rimbaud. I also love William Shakespeare. Fernando Pessoa is one of my soldiers. I’m a fan of Pessoa. Marquise. Again, I like Portuguese writers. I am very curious about Jose Saramago’s chefs and his writings.
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